Vintage Irving: Hey everybody, there’s a new wine bar and small plates place opening! Now you have a zillion and one to choose from – except this one’s different, at least a little; it features a cozy private tasting room where the owners plan to host sommeliers and celebrity chefs, starting with Top Chef survivor Sam Talbot, Eater reports. In the meantime, the public is free to enjoy what Strongbuzz describes as the “countryside café”......

Tropic Thunder – an action/comedy lampoon of a Vietnam action movie gone awry – would seem worth the price of admission just to see Robert Downey, Jr. in blackface, but Robert Wilonsky's Village Voice slam does give one pause: "When it isn't tossing softballs at the studios, Tropic Thunder is the very thing it parodies: a wall of noise engulfed in flame... Stiller is back in the send-up business, nibbling gently at the soft,......

Watch your back, Dick Cheney! Actor Ed Asner, former Dallas Cowboy Mark Stepnoski, and formerly famous hip hop group Arrested Development are leading a petition drive to get a referendum on New York City’s November ballot that would establish a new 9/11 investigation. If the group, called 911 Truth, can collect 30,000 signatures before September 4th, the City Council will be required to consider the measure, which calls for an investigative panel with subpoena......

PetalBelle: Aw, this cute new SoHo waffle place from the owners of Lombardi’s will, Thrillist reports, be serving Belgian “liege” waffles made with “a wide-grain Scandinavian sweetener some call ‘pearl sugar,’ and others ‘Nütra Sweet.’” Eater further notes that there are “four flavors of gelato" and – deep breath – "basic coffee drinks." 158 Sullivan St, (212) 677-1580 Botinica: Red Hook has a fancy new bar to go with its fancy new Swedish retailer. It’s......

This week the Times’s Frank Bruni opines on Scarpetta (pictured), the new Meatpacking District Italian restaurant from Scott Conant (L’Impero, Alto) that the Village Voice loved and the Sun disdained. Bruni bestows a big three stars, raving about the unassuming dish of spaghetti, tomato and basil: “However Mr. Conant is choosing and cooking the Roma tomatoes with which he sauces his house-made spaghetti, he’s getting a roundness of flavor and nuance of sweetness that amount......

Verizon has entered the cable TV game today, providing an alternative to Time Warner and Cablevision in select neighborhoods. For $94.99, the current promotional deal for FiOS includes unlimited local and long-distance phone service, an Internet connection of 20 megabits per second and a television package that includes 100 high-definition channels. But according to the Times, the company’s expansion could be hindered by some 65,000 Verizon workers who are threatening to strike for higher wages,......

Chickpea: We used to love Chickpea, that fresh falafel place on Third Avenue and St. Mark’s Place that let you squirt as much tahini as you wanted into your pita. But we lost interest when they went through that whole confusing name change contest – marred by allegations that the game was rigged – and ended up calling themselves Kosher Village. Now it’s Tahini, and they bake their falafel, which is as about healthy as......

Multi-instrumentalist Mike Gordon – revered for his virtuoso bass playing and distinctive singing with the trailblazing jam band Phish – is releasing a new solo album on August 5th, right in the midst of feverish speculation about a Phish reunion; speculation that's been all but confirmed by the band members themselves. As Gordon tells us in this interview, the timing of all this increased Phish chatter is a bit "weird," mainly because he's so excited......

Another jewel in the BAM Cultural district crown has been revealed with the recent announcement that the city-owned Strand Theatre at 647 Fulton Street will be renovated for expanded use by BRIC – the Brooklyn cultural organization that manages Celebrate Brooklyn!, BCAT, and the Rotunda Gallery, among other programs – and UrbanGlass, an educational glassworks group. Both organizations already have facilities at the former theater. According to the BRIC press release, The New York City......

Convivio: The Tudor City restaurant formerly known as L’Impero has been reborn as Convivio (pictured), a more casual but still swish venture from the same team, Chris Cannon and chef Michael White. Located in a historic 1920s building, the space is made deluxe with burnt orange banquettes, a hand-hammered copper bar top, and reflective lacquered ceilings. White – who spent seven years studying Italian cuisine in Imola – emphasizes the southern part of the boot......

Galapagos has officially set up shop and opened their doors in DUMBO, though a full schedule isn't planned to go into effect until September. The beautiful new space, located between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges on the corner Water and Main Streets, can hold 175 seated and around 230 standing. Director Robert Elmes told us that the new arts space will continue to focus on the cultural ecosystem by hosting "theater, dance, performance art, cinema,......

Macondo: Named after the fictional Colombian village in Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, this new Lower East Side restaurant gives Latin street food a gourmet twist. We stopped in for dinner Thursday night, and though they're still working out the kinks (the frozen drinks took forever, and some of the staff had no idea what they were setting down on the table) it's worth a trip for the cod fish Arepa alone.......

Photo of proud new iPhone owner Greg Packer courtesy Engadget. According to Engadget, it’s “an absolute zoo” at Apple's 5th Avenue store, as consumers surged forth at 8 a.m. to purchase the next generation of iPhone, the 3G. Some of them have been camping outside the store (and at Apple stores around the world) since last week to be the very first geeks to own the new cell phone, and, with it, a priceless sense......

Mercadito Cantina: This is newest advance in the expanding Mercadito empire; besides the original Alphabet City Mercadito there’s also Mercadito Grove. This one is not far from the original, on Avenue B, and packs a lot of Mexican fixings into a dainty space that stays open ‘til 1 a.m. The main action here is at the make your own taco bar, where heavy rollers can choose from eight guacamoles and ten salsas, all made from......

Not-so-fun fact: According to the city’s DOT, it’s illegal to lock you bike to anything other than a bicycle rack. Thankfully, it’s not a law that seems to be enforced, but anyone who’s commuted by bicycle long enough will have the experience of finding the sign you locked your bike to removed so workers can tear up the sidewalk. The problem is that there are now approximately 131,000 cyclists in New York City and only......

Remember the plans for that fancy new TKTS theater ticket booth in Times Square that were unveiled back in Aught Six? Producer Ken Davenport (Altar Boyz) does, and the other day he was just wondering, you know, why the hell it’s not ready yet, since they originally said it would be open for business in just six short months. (The Times Square TKTS has been operating at the Marriot Marquis in the meantime.) So Davenport......

Alloro: Green Lantern, party of seven? The photo above depicts Alloro, a new 50-seat Italian restaurant on the Upper East Side. The chef is Salvatore Corea, a native Calabrian, who’s leaving front-of-the-house duties to his wife Gina, just like a real-life Artie and Charmaine Bucco. Let’s just hope the mob doesn’t torch their place. Per the press release, the menu features “classic Italian specialties transformed into gastronomical creations,” such as loin of lamb in a fresh mint reduction with eggplant purée and pecorino cheese foam. And Alloro has the additional virtue of granting diners invisibility on St. Patrick’s Day. 307 East 77th Street, (212) 535-2866....

It's been three years since we've gotten a look at what the High Line park – currently under construction on what was once an overgrown elevated railway – will look like. Today the Friends of the High Line, who've come a long way in their crusade to turn the disused tracks into an easily accessible urban oasis, joined Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe to unveil the ambitious design renderings. Friends of the High Line co-founder Robert......

Clover Club: This new Cobble Hill lounge has no connection to this Clover Club “located in beautifull [sic] Mark, Illinois,” so leave your green face paint at home. The atmosphere here, as evinced by the photo, is old world charm and sophistication, hearkening back to an era when men dueled with pistols, not text messages, and the curse of the Cosmo had not yet darkened New York. Small plates include oysters on the half shell,......

Today the Times’s Frank Bruni relates his multiple visits to West Village Asian barbecue restaurant Bar Q, and by the sounds of it you’d never guess print media is in any kind of financial trouble – an initial trip with one group of ungrateful friends prompted so much "grumbling" he had to "unruffle their feathers" by being “especially profligate with the wine” on his paper’s expense account. The hangers-on who shared his second visit tasted......

Tonight is the housewarming party, so to speak, for the Tenement Museum's new apartment and the opening of its first tour since 2002. This one is titled, The Moores: An Irish Family in America. They tell us that "it’s taken about 6 years from concept to completion for this particular project. That includes research, planning, fundraising, designing, bringing the upper floors up to code, purchasing artifacts for the apartment, developing content." Like their other apartments,......

Following her collaborative show opening at Honey Space, street artist Swoon adorned her hometown cityscape with some new pieces. Last year some of her work fell victim to the Splasher, which she responded to by redoing the pieces. Hopefully these new cutouts will stay unharmed for a while.......

Hollywood, 1940. As Hitler devours Europe and America inches toward war, a remarkable technology that could prove invaluable to the U.S. Navy is invented by… a sexy movie star and an avant garde composer? Though it sounds more than a little far-fetched, it’s actually a true story, and the subject of Elyse Singer’s multimedia play Frequency Hopping. Staged at 3 Legged Dog, the elegant production deploys a small army of robotic instruments (drums, gongs,......

Shalizar: Bangladesh native Parvez Eliaas and his Iranian partner Kaz Bayati have just opened their second Persian restaurant on the Upper East Side, not far from their original venture, Persepolis. According to Thrillist, the new bistro is distinguished by exposed brick and a spacious bar, where old world wines, pomegranate cocktails and wild berry-infused vodkas can be savored. The Middle Eastern menu includes delicacies like baby lamb stew and salmon kebab. 1420 Third Avenue near......

Today the Times’s Frank Bruni destroys Ago (pictured), the new Italian restaurant in Tribeca’s Greenwich Hotel owned by Robert De Niro. It’s a savage burn, and way more entertaining than any movie De Niro’s been involved with during the last decade. Things go sideways immediately when the bartender unleashes “the Poseidon Adventure of wine spills” on Bruni’s lady friend and his party of four has to wait almost an hour for their table, which is......

Red Egg: The glittering new Chinatown restaurant pictured above had its share of hassles before finally opening this week – something to do with the construction company failing to get the right permits – but after a six week delay, Red Egg’s staff is finally ready to get cracking. Executive Chef Mei Kun Chen was previously the State Chef for Guangzhou (not exactly a lightweight); second in command is Yu Hua Wu, who did......

The Empire State Building is going couture! Well, sort of. From a press release about the 300 newly-uniformed employees:As part of a $500 million renovation to restore the Empire State Building’s 1930’s glory, new Art Deco-inspired uniforms are rolling out for staff this summer to kick off the season in style. The dapper uniforms are made to measure and have unique 1930’s details that fit the period and character of the ESB, like chevrons on......

Kafana: Serbia has landed in Alphabet City, over on Avenue C. Owner Vladimir Ocokoljic tells NY Mag that what sets his new place (pictured) apart can be summed up in one word: “Pork.” Thrillist has the menu, and Ocokoljic isn’t playing: pork dominates, from the Meat Meze appetizer of assorted pork rinds to the pan fried schnitzel entrée rolled with ham and creamy spread. There are salads for the swine-averse, as well as some concessions......

Nestled away on a romantic little bend of Commerce Street in the West Village is Commerce, the newish bar and restaurant from chef Harold Moore and restaurateur Tony Zazula. Operating out of a carriage house dating back to 1911, the place was formerly a Prohibition-era speakeasy, then Blue Mill Tavern for 50 years, then the neighborhood favorite Grange Hall. You might assume that its new iteration is a fussy stab at resuscitating the past, but......

When we first noted this incoming Brazilian restaurant/bar back at the beginning of January, we incorrectly referred to it as Favela. Turns out it's Miss Favela to you (and us); the South Williamsburg "Brazilian Botequim" is currently in soft opening mode. Co-owner Alain Denneulin (of Soho's French Bistro Felix) tells us they're shooting for an official opening June 2nd. And once Miss Favela is in full swing, they'll be serving lunch and dinner until midnight......